Eyes
by Raziel12
Summary: RWBY with a Lovecraftian twist. Chapter 1: There's a reason people have always feared and revered the warriors with silver eyes.


**Eyes**

Dearest Ruby,

There is nothing more terrible than to look into the mirror every morning and know that you are a monster. You can run as fast as you want, but you can never outrun the face you see in the mirror. You can cut and claw and curse, and still that face will be there. Those eyes will be there.

In my younger days, I wondered why the heroes of legend always had silver eyes. What set them apart? What was it about those eyes that made them so powerful? For much of my youth, I scoured the world for every scrap of information I could find.

I wish I had not.

I might be able to sleep at night if I did not know. I might be able to look myself in the mirror without wanting to scream. I might be able to hold you without wondering if I should slit your throat to spare you the horror of what awaits.

The truth is a truly terrible thing. We can hide in lies. We can seek comfort in fairy tales and legends. But the truth permits no distortion. It offers no mercy. It is a mountain standing firm against the howling of the wind, and all the tears and prayers in the world will not move it.

I found out the truth shortly after you were born. It was on a mission to a village that had been reporting strange things, Grimm that no one had ever seen before. So I went because that is what huntresses do. We strike down the Grimm, so that people can live in safety.

When I arrived at the village. I was already too late. All I found was ash and blood, and a trail of corpses that led me deep into a cave that delved into the very roots of a mountain.

You cannot even begin to imagine what it was like fighting the Grimm down there. The darkness has a way of closing in on you. You start to see things and hear things, and the Grimm seem to be everywhere. You can feel their eyes on you, and you can feel their teeth and their claws tearing into your flesh.

Time passes differently. You fight Grimm after Grimm after Grimm until they all blend together into one vast, hungry conglomerate of teeth, claws, and bone. I might have gone a little mad down there. No. I'm certain I did. How else can I explain why I continued onward instead of turning back.

Finally, I reached the heart of the mountain. And there, before me, was a Grimm unlike any I had seen. It was enormous, a bloated, twisted ocean of warped flesh and writhing bone. A thousand eyes stared back at me, and a thousand mouths gave voice to sounds that had no place in any sane and decent world.

You see, that Grimm wasn't howling or roaring or baying. No. It was speaking with the voices of countless people. I heard children crying and calling out for their parents. I heard parents wailing and mourning their slaughtered sons and daughters. I heard soldiers curse, and I heard farmers mutter about the passing of the seasons.

So often the Grimm do not leave bodies behind.

In that instant, I saw why.

Lesser Grimm were throwing the bodies of the villagers they'd killed into that vile, hideous, unspeakable thing. I wanted to run, but my body refused to move. From within the ocean of warped flesh came light, the light of Aura. This Grimm, this monster, it had a soul, and not just one. It had the souls of every person who had been thrown into it, a multitude of tortured, wailing souls.

And in the light of those souls, I saw that this was no natural cavern the Grimm had found. It had been hewn out of the mountain by human hands. There, half-hidden amidst the flesh of the titanic Grimm, were the ruins of a city. Broken spires, toppled arches, and long, crumbling walls protruded from its body, and on the walls of the cavern, illuminated in that terrible light, were pictures.

I wish I had walked away then. I wish I had not looked. But I did, and the truth I saw there will forever be burned into my mind.

The Grimm…

The Grimm were not created by gods. They were not an accident of nature. No. We made them. They are our children. I saw on those walls pictures of what the people of that city had done.

In days long gone, there was war, a great and terrible war. It was waged with powers that made the earth tremble and the skies burn. Titans of metal and stone raged across the land, and weapons of unholy design boiled away the oceans and the seas.

To win that terrible war, the people of the city designed a weapon. It would warp the souls of their dead and turn them into nightmares made flesh. I had always wondered why the Grimm look like things torn from our darkest dreams. Now I know.

When these first Grimm proved successful in driving the enemy back, they went further, for the Grimm could only be created from the tortured souls of the dead. And the dead, well, they were easy to create. There, on the walls, was the story of what they did.

There were camps, places where they brought the ones they disliked, the one they had no use for, the ones who were expendable. The horrors they inflicted on those people were beyond forgiveness. There are necessary cruelties in life, but what they did was not necessary. And in time, they grew to revel in it.

They triumphed, and their enemies became ash on the wind before the fury of the Grimm. Yet some small part of the souls remained, and the Grimm grew to hate their creators. They chafed at their bonds, and then they broke free. Like a verminous tide, the Grimm swept over the empire of their creators. Cities fell. Entire provinces were swamped in blood.

And the Grimm grew ever more numerous. For in their cruelty, their creators had taught them how to increase their numbers. Every painful death, every wail of agony, every unanswered plea for mercy gave birth to more Grimm. And at the heart of the Grimm were monstrous aberrations, roiling, seething oceans of flesh from which new Grimm were born from the tortured souls of the damned.

Yes. That thing… that ineffable thing was one of them, one of the sources of the Grimm.

In their desperation, the empire turned once again to the scientists and wielders of magic that had created the Grimm. They could not kill the Grimm. They were far beyond killing by that point. So they devised a new plan. They took an innocent soul, and they warped it, twisting it until it was almost a Grimm but still barely human.

That soul became a child, and that child became a warrior, and that warrior had eyes of purest silver.

When they sent the warrior out to fight, his eyes blazed like the moon, and the Grimm ceased their fighting in order to obey. What they could not destroy, they would instead control. But they had made a terrible mistake. For a soul so twisted, so warped, could not stay human forever.

Little by little, day by day, every time the warrior used his power to control the Grimm, he became a little less human and a little more Grimm. One day, one terrible day, the warrior looked upon the empire he served, and he saw only prey. Eyes ablaze with that terrible silver light, he gave voice to the collective desire of the Grimm.

"Kill."

And the Grimm fell once more upon the empire, but this time, there was method to their madness. The warrior had shared his knowledge with them, and they put it to terrible to use. The empire's defences were overrun, its people were devoured, and the civilisation it had built was forced underground, its last remaining citizens huddling in subterranean fortresses.

The Grimm did not kill them right away. Instead, they laid siege, and one by one, those fortresses fell, their people starving and suffocating in the long, hopeless dark. But elsewhere, there were survivors. Elsewhere, a child was born, one sired by the warrior before the madness in his soul overtook him.

And that child had silver eyes.

We know there are Grimm so powerful they can crush cities. We know there are Grimm so cunning, they can undo even the finest plans our generals make. We have never understood why they exist until now. There, on those walls, was the explanation. When the warrior succumbed to his madness, he ceased to be human, first in mind… and finally in form.

And so it was with all of his descendants.

Heroes, they were called, and the power of their silver eyes was hailed as a miracle.

Those poor, misguided fools. How many civilisations, how many societies had seen their salvation in those silver-eyed warriors only to realise, too late, the horror within them. No wonder the Grimm always win. No wonder one civilisation after another falls.

Only a silver-eyed warrior can hold back the Grimm, but the more they use their powers, the closer they get to becoming Grimm. And when they do turn, all that knowledge, all the trust they've been given, all the secrets they know, belong to the Grimm. The Grimm don't lose. They can't lose.

And on the cycle goes, over and over and over again.

I have silver eyes. I can stop Grimm in their tracks with them. And I know every important military secret in the world. I know how we plan to stop the Grimm, and I know how our forces are distributed. And every year, they ask me to use my powers to hold the Grimm back.

I never used to mind, but lately, I've found myself hating it. Why do I have to keep saving everyone? Why do I have to carry this burden? Can a civilisation that relies so heavily on one person be worth saving? There are days when the anger and the hate are like poison in my veins. I find myself clenching my jaw so hard it hurts, and there are times when my hands shake from the fury.

I don't want to keep saving everyone. There is a part of me that just wants to watch the world burn. It would be beautiful, a tide of claws and teeth washing over civilisation. Screams would fill the air, and the night would be heavy with the smell of ash and blood. I can almost taste it.

But there is still enough of me that remains human to understand what is happening. I cannot allow it to happen. I will not. Unlike the others, I know about the cycle. I know why civilisations rise and fall with the arrival of warriors with silver eyes. We aren't saviours. We're harbingers of doom. Our eyes can't see the future – they can only bring back the horrors of the past.

Someday soon, it will become too much for me. I will find myself giving in. When that happens, I'll go on a mission, and I won't come back. I can't save civilisation, but maybe I can buy it a few years.

It's not fair, but the rest, I leave to you. Do not use the power in your eyes. They aren't a blessing. They're a curse. I don't regret giving birth to you. You are truly the one good thing in my life, but do not continue the cycle. One way or the other, whether civilisation wins or loses, it has to end.

Good luck.

With Great Love And Affection,

Summer Rose

X X X

**Addendum**

Ruby Rose was admitted to Beacon Academy not long after her fifteenth birthday. She is one of only a handful of blind students to ever pass the entrance exam. Although the exact circumstances of her blindness are uncertain, there have long been rumours that her injures are self-inflicted.

When asked about her eyes, Ruby has always firmly maintained that they were the same colour as her father's. When told that there are pictures of her having silver eyes as a child, Ruby insists that she never had silver eyes. Of course, the question is largely academic. Ruby's blindness isn't caused by damage to her eyes. She no longer has eyes. They have been completely removed.

X X X

**Author's Notes**

As always, I do not own RWBY, and I am not making any money off of this.

Well, here's something a bit darker and more Lovecraftian. It's been a while since I've had a chance to go in that direction, so I thought I'd give it a go.

As always, I appreciate feedback. Reviews and comments are welcome.


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